Shirley Russak Wachtel Books in Order

Charlie’s reputation as the class cook is threatened when his classmates fall ill after eating his strawberry cake. He and his friends investigate the mystery, following clues through a series of adventures, with recipes accompanying each chapter.

Shirley Russak Wachtel recounts her mother Blima’s experiences as a Jewish woman in wartime Poland. An ordinary life is overturned by Nazi persecution, and the daughter preserves a survivor’s account of the Holocaust and the world it destroyed.

When a promising new basketball teammate disappears from practice, Brad Sureshot begins investigating with only a few puzzling clues. His search carries him from a small town toward Africa, while basketball exercises accompany the unfolding mystery.

Spanning more than thirty years, Wachtel’s poems attend to ordinary activities, family life and encounters with nature. Rhyme, free verse, pantoum and haiku become ways of noticing the small moments that reveal emotional significance within everyday experience.

Blima survives the Holocaust and rebuilds her life in Brooklyn, where memories of Poland shape her bond with daughter Shirley. Their alternating perspectives trace fifty years of loss, survival, and the enduring influence of family history.

Two families in upstate New York struggle with grief, troubled relationships, and memories that cross generations. A Holocaust survivor’s enduring pain, a single father’s loss, and a mother’s mysterious visions connect their attempts to understand the past and survive the present.

Zoey welcomes a purple elephant who appears in her room, but nobody else can see her new companion. Feeling alone in her discovery, she heads toward an unexpected experience in the park that changes how she sees things.

These short stories follow characters reaching decisive moments in their lives. The opening tale considers a woman’s distant marriage and her devotion to synagogue life, beginning a collection concerned with the choices and tensions beneath familiar routines.

Emmy’s family keeps asking where she is as she plays, attends nursery school, eats dinner, and prepares for bed. The search follows her familiar daily activities until a family photograph brings everyone together for a reassuring discovery.

After surviving wartime Poland together, Jacob and Zalman reunite in America and build a Brooklyn home with Jacob’s wife Esther. An unexpected tragedy threatens their friendship and the family they have created, reopening wounds from the past.

Lena grows up in Brooklyn longing to become a baker like her mother, whose Polish past remains unspoken. As friendship, marriage, and loss shape her life, buried family history challenges her understanding of her parents and herself.